Lines in the Sand
by Cr1mson5
Summary: What if you could bend your world around you to conform to your wishes, your will? What would you do with that power?
1. Hopeless

**If I suddenly become the owner of anything, I'll let you know.**

**Rating: PG-13/T for my usual stuff**

**WARNING/NOTE: I'm a huge fan of the **_**Matrix Trilogy**_**, and due to the nature of this story (including all spoilers I will not reveal in my author's note!), there will be some blatant **_**Matrix**_** references herein. Now enjoy! **

High-pitched beeps sounded softly in time to the heartbeats of the two young people lying side-by-side in their hospital beds. Plastic tubes protruded from their veins, their skin, leading to IV bags and countless more machines designed to do heaven knew what. The only noise in the room was the hissing of the oxygen as they breathed it in and out, in and out, in and out…

Dick shook his head. He'd always known they could get into some serious trouble doing what they did, but never had he been able to imagine his little brother in a hospital breathing air out of a metal canister and just…not doing anything. He hated this, hated every second of it, but he wasn't about to leave Tim there. No way would he just walk out on him now, after so long of coming by every day to see him.

He reached out and gently wrapped his fingers around his little brother's wrist. "Hey, there, Tim," he greeted him softly. "You don't look quite so pale today. I think you might be getting better." He glanced over to the left, at Tam, and swallowed hard. "I don't know if you can hear me, if you even listen when I talk to you. You never used to. But, if you can, could you just…could you just get better fast? We all miss your smile, and your laugh, and your voice over the phone when you're pissed off at work. We miss you coming over unannounced just to make dinner with Alfred and sit down for a movie. We miss everything that we all used to do together, and I just…please. Please, if you're in there and listening, come back to us soon."

He felt more than heard someone walk up behind him, and warm, strong hands were placed on his shoulders comfortingly. "He'll get better, Dick," Bruce reassured his oldest. "He's strong. You'll see."

Dick sighed. "I hate myself for saying this, Bruce, but…there are times when I wonder if it's a hopeless cause. They've been lying here in this hospital for six months. Their conditions have barely changed. I mean, they've both had one or two moments, but that's pretty much it. I just…" He trailed off. "I guess I just don't want to get my hopes up, just in case it doesn't work out."

Bruce exhaled slowly through his nose and squeezed Dick's shoulders. He didn't want to have to admit that he was considering the same thing, but, then again, Tim had probably had similar doubts, back when Bruce had been lost in time. The boy hadn't given up on his father, so the man was determined not to give up on his son. "They'll both get better. It'll just take some time, like everything else."

Across the room, Lucius Fox stood up and left his daughter's side for the first time in six months. He walked over to the other two men, every footstep seemingly weighed down by a thousand pounds of misery. He shook his head and took a deep breath. "I just wish I knew how this happened," he murmured.

"We all do, Lucius," Bruce replied, moving a hand from Dick's shoulder to that of his old friend. "We all do."

Quiet enveloped the room once again as the three continued to keep their watch over their loved ones.

_**Six months ago…**_

I collapsed onto the couch in my living room, rubbing my temples to rid myself of a stress migraine that was just too damn persistent for its own good and mine. My house had just been finished, my headquarters was now fully operational, but there was one thing missing.

Five days before, I had watched my girlfriend walk out on me, and for a legitimate reason, too. She had believed her father was dead, I'd saved him, but I neglected to tell her that. I was just trying to protect them both, trying to keep the news low-profile until it could afford to be revealed, but apparently, that wasn't good enough for Tam Fox. She would still talk to me occasionally, yes, but only about Wayne Foundation business and only on a professional level. It was like she hated me.

And she probably did.

And I was not okay with that.

I got up to go into the bathroom and check on the wounds I'd received from Cricket. (Was it bad that I wanted to pummel that kid solely because he reminded me so much of Damian…?) Standing in front of the mirror, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the glass, I couldn't help but gaze into the cool gray eyes looking back at me and want to hate myself. I'd just proven to Tam, yet again, my aptitude for being an utter asshole to her. She'd been right; I'd victimized the one person I was closest to. And yet…despite all of that, despite the fact that I should've felt bad, I didn't, and I had no idea why.

Suddenly, a feeling bubbled up in my chest, an emotion, something like anger. Before even giving it a second thought, I balled up my left hand into a fist, raised it, and slammed the soft, fleshy side of it into the mirror. Pain exploded in my hand as the glass cracked outward from the collision point, no doubt embedding tiny pieces in my skin. Shards of glass rained down onto the tile and into the sink, glimmering in the light as they fell. "Shit!" I hissed, diving for the toilet paper roll. Getting out enough to create a makeshift bandage for my hand proved to be harder than you would've thought, considering my other arm was in a sling, but I managed it and was hurriedly applying it to my freshly-injured hand when the phone rang.

I rolled my eyes. Couldn't have one free moment, could I? I pressed my hand against my stomach to keep the toilet paper secure on the wound and, after some struggle, managed to poke the phone enough times that I actually hit the speakerphone button. "Drake," I said.

"_Hey, Tim, it's Dick. You checked on that hand yet?"_

I almost felt myself pale. How'd he know? "Um…w-what do you mean?"

"_The hand Cricket smashed up for you, did you check on it yet?"_

_Oh. _"I was just getting ready to when you called." It wasn't a total lie, not really.

"_Speaking of that…I was actually just calling to make sure you're okay. I mean, you've been acting kind of off the past few days, and I just…I worry about you still sometimes, Tim."_

I couldn't stop myself from sighing. I'd been expecting this call to come. Dick was always worried about me: always wondering if I was getting enough to eat, or if I was taking good enough care of myself, or if I was completely nuts and had neglected to tell anybody. It was the same routine that had been going on since I first became Red Robin. Nobody seemed able to let go of those days. "Look, Dick…I know you're concerned, and I understand it. Really, I do. It's just that…I'm doing just fine on my own. And I know that I used to be in a really bad place, I used to have a really bad mindset, but I'm recovering. I'm getting over it. Can't you?"

He was silent for a moment or two, and then he let out a slow breath. _"Okay. I just feel better—safer, I guess—if I know. You know?"_

"Yeah, I know. Anything else you wanted to talk about, or…?"

He got the hint, thank God, and he only sounded mildly surprised when he responded to the dismissive question. _"No, no, I'm good. Thanks for indulging my excessive worry, little brother. Catch you later."_

"Bye, Dick."

I hung up almost wishing that I hadn't brushed him off like that. It was rude of me, I know, and I know that Dick deserved better than that, what with all the times he'd been there for me in the past and how willing he was to support me now that we'd both been through what it was like to actually _miss_ talking to one another. But I didn't not-regret what I said because I was still upset over being treated like I was nuts, not exactly. It wasn't really anything I could explain, per se. It was just this feeling in my gut, an unidentifiable instinct that told me I shouldn't be sorry. So, I just…wasn't.

I eased down onto the couch, moving my hand away from the toilet paper flattened against my abdomen. I twisted both my arm and my neck to see the side of my hand, and my jaw dropped in shock.

Where I'd thought there was a gash, there was only smooth, flawless skin without even a tiny nick.

I glanced down at the toilet paper I'd been pressing it against, and it was pure white, blank…unstained. No blood, no wound, but the glass in the bathroom testified to the fact that there should've been. I swallowed hard, hoping my saliva might carry a little bit of the intense unease down with it. My life had always been strange (to put it lightly), but this? This was unnatural.

The sound of the phone ringing again nearly made me jump out of my seat. I reached over and picked it up, saying cautiously into it, "Hello?"

"_Have you noticed anything different about your life lately?"_

The voice was baritone, warm and chocolaty, one of a male with a slight Gotham accent. And it set me even more on edge, made my skin crawl and my bones chill. I swallowed hard. "Who is this?" I demanded.

A soft chuckle came from the other end of the line.

"_Watch your back, Tim."_

And after that, there was only the long, droning beep of the hang-up tone.


	2. Inventions

**WARNING: This chapter is a slight AU of events detailed in ****Red Robin**** #26, which I have yet to read, so much of that element is derived from my own imagination.**

While I waited for my arm to heal up, I got to work on designing a few new inventions for my own personal pleasure. I figured my suit could use a couple of additions…or a complete redesign. One of the two was in order. I was hanging out in the training area, trying on one of the new gloves for size. I slipped it over my uninjured hand and held it up, fluttering the fingers a little bit. It was hard not to admire the way it'd turned out, just like it had been when I imagined it. You wouldn't think it'd take two weeks to put together a pair of leather gloves with (stolen) red finger-stripes and razor-sharp claws curving perfectly off the fingernails, but there was more to it than needles and thread. After having the color scheme in the Unternet, I couldn't resist taking it for my own costume.

I clenched my hand into a fist as best I could and figured out rather quickly that it wouldn't work with the claws. The most I could get out of it was curling my fingers into a shape reminiscent of a lowercase R. So, I gave up on that and settled for just slashing at the air. I worked through every strike I could think of. Overhand…underhand…east-west…west-east…and then, before I knew it, there was a slicing noise, oddly metallic, and a staff held up on a stand was falling apart into five pieces, four of which clattered to the floor. I jumped back, surprised, and surveyed my glove again. _Okay,_ I thought. _That's something that might never see field use…_

Needless to say, after that fiasco, I decided to put the clawed gloves up.

I didn't think it was the smartest idea to test out my wings in such a relatively small, closed space like my HQ. And the other new weapons were already proven operational, so that only left one thing to test. Once the sling was off, I sat at the worktable, turning one of them over in my fingers and analyzing it for imperfections. Hypervelocity pellets, made of the same titanium alloy as my Batarangs and outfitted with ten spikes on the front end, they were round spheres the size of a dime that weighed in at about the same as your average light-caliber bullet. I'd conceived the idea myself, when I realized that the more…conventional…of the Bat-family's methods weren't really working out too well. I mean, it wasn't that it was _impossible_ to win a fight with fists, lines, and non-lethal attacks, or that I couldn't do it; it was just that it took too much time. I preferred for things to go as quickly as possible, especially factoring in my Hit List, so I came up with the pellets. They had filled the time that went into the last leg of my recovery, all four weeks of it. They could only be fired from a specially-designed blaster, and the spikes could be coated in any number of substances, from tranquilizer to the world's deadliest poisons. The downside of the "hypervelocity" part was kind of a given—they traveled faster than any bullet ever could, and if you fired from too close of a range, the attack was lethal, no questions asked.

I knew that, if the others had any idea about the pellets, they'd confiscate them, think I was crossing a line or getting too comfortable with being a little more outside the family. But the strange thing was…I didn't really care. I didn't really see a reason to. After all, this way was so much more effective. It'd take them down, fast and easy, and nobody said I had to kill them. This weapon didn't have to be lethal.

Assuming, of course, that the tests ran smoothly, and if not, well, I wasn't sure what I'd do.

I'd set up five human-thickness targets on the lowest level of my HQ, each with a different firing range. I hit the first one from ten feet and blew a hole through it as wide as my thumb. _Alright, so that's not really an option. _I stepped back to twenty and fired at the next target, getting the pellet in just shy of deep enough to penetrate. Thirty brought it to the halfway point. Forty got it in at near-entirely beneath skin level. Fifty, though, was the real accomplishment. Fifty got it where I needed it: embedded in the skin, but no penetration beyond that. I removed my goggles and earpieces, smirking to myself in satisfaction. Oh, yeah. Fifty-foot minimum firing range equals no objections.

I was on the lift, heading back up top, when I heard a 12 Stones song start playing from the computer. I rolled my eyes, regretting hooking my phone up to my HQ's mainframe, but I answered it anyway. "Drake," I called into the microphone.

The voice of a man came on. _"You've got some interesting developments there, Tim."_

I shuddered in spite of myself. That voice, that tone…the memories flooded back into my mind, sending the barest brush of a chill up my spine. It was the same man who'd called me six weeks before. I squelched the unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach and forced my own voice to even out, to go cold and emotionless. "You've called me before," I said. "Who are you?"

"_Such feats of engineering you've been able to accomplish, and at only seventeen years old. It's remarkable. Just watch how you demonstrate. Some people will try to twist that talent, turn it into a curse. Take care how you use your new weapon. Sometimes, it's better to follow the lines in the sand than it is to cross them."_

"Look, I don't know what this is about, but if you're trying to get something out of me—"

"_We'll be in touch."_

I hung up before he had the chance to make the line go dead. "The hell we will," I grumbled. Nobody could try to turn me into something I'd regret if nobody knew about what I'd been doing. Besides, I wouldn't let myself get out of control with that thing.

And even if I did, I told myself as I ascended back up to my living room, somebody would rein me back in, show me the way again. That was what family was for.

It probably defeated the purpose of ever leaving the HQ to begin with, but I sat down at my laptop the second I got upstairs and checked my e-mail. Predictably, there was something from Dick in there, but it wasn't the usual happy-go-lucky message I was accustomed to getting. I have to admit that the only reason I bothered looking at it was because the subject line read "Bad News." I clicked on it and quickly scanned the text he'd put in.

**CAPTAIN BOOMERANG IS IN GOTHAM.**

_WHAT?_

I read it again, and again, and again, and it took another three tries before I was coherent enough to actually put in an answer.

**WHY DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?**

Captain Boomerang didn't really have fans among our number, but he was less likely to be treated kindly by any of the Bats than, say, the Supers or the Flashes. Namely, it was due to the fact that he had murdered my father two years before. It had been so long, I'd had so much time to let it go, but I couldn't. Every time I pictured his face…every time I remembered what my dad's body looked like, lying on our kitchen floor with the blood pooling around him on the tile, it felt like somebody had driven that boomerang through _my_ heart, torn straight through _my_ body. And it felt like that then, reading that news, or it was supposed to, anyway. Even though my thoughts were locked on the one man I hated more than anything else in the world, I couldn't bring myself to feel as strongly about it as I used to. My rage was oddly diluted, so papery thin that I could barely register its existence.

I resolved to make it where it didn't have to exist at all.

That night, I set out to find Boomerang. I knew that I shouldn't have given in to the temptation, and I technically shouldn't have even been out there, what with my arm and all, but I couldn't help myself. It was just too opportune. The moment was just…it was…it was _there_, staring me in the face and poised to spit in it if I didn't make a move. I kept telling myself the whole time that I didn't have to kill him, didn't have to lose control. All I had to do was just track him down and catch him.

I found him right on top of the old apartment building, the same one Dad and I used to live in, staring down at the city in the same way people stare down at ants: contemptuously. Seeing how ignorant he was of the bad memories and the blood he'd spilled there blew all pretenses away. I landed some ways back from him and called out sharply, "Harkness!"

He turned to me with a smirk on his face akin to what I imagine he must've had the day he killed my dad. "You gonna send me to jail now, birdie?" he teased.

I reached into my belt and pulled out a batarang, hiding it beneath my cape. "No. I'm gonna send you to Hell."


	3. Link

**See warning for Chapter 2, "Inventions"; also, fear not. Some things will be of greater importance later on in the story.**

Our battle carried us across the rooftops of Gotham, miles on end of nothing but open air if somebody fell. It wasn't hard to spook him into running. The second he saw that I wasn't about to back down, he fled. Of course, I gave chase, practically clipping his heels the whole way. We flung boomerang after Batarang after boomerang after Batarang at each other, mostly missing.

That is, until I actually managed to slice his line and sent him tumbling down to the roof of the nearest high-rise.

The landing hurt. I'd had it happen to me enough times that I knew for sure what it felt like. I touched down lightly a few meters away from him, fingering another Batarang in my hand. In the heat of the moment, I didn't question why he was suddenly some kind of acrobat. I didn't question why I was the only one who was pursuing a dangerous criminal, a known killer. All I could think to myself was: _Stop. Don't get any closer to him. Just…just stand back and don't let yourself do something you'll regret._

But then, I thought about my dad, about how he was when I found him, and it was a lot harder to listen to that voice of reason in my head.

He stood on shaky legs, reaching with a trembling hand for another boomerang to throw at me. Instinct took over, pulling my arm back and snapping it forward, making my fingers release their grip on the Batarang. The gleaming black metal spun in the air, arcing down until it skewered Boomerang's left knee. He fell to the ground, the wound spilling blood, and I took the moment to make my move.

It was like the noises of the city, the commotion of a living place down below, died away. My footsteps pounded across the roof toward Boomerang, my heartbeat filling my ears. I could hear that voice of reason again, smaller and quieter, losing power with every step.

_Please. You can control yourself. Don't do this._

But the pellet blaster was already in my hand, loaded and cocked. I was standing over him, staring him in the face. His eyes locked onto mine, and I saw the look of sheer terror in them. He knew. Even before I'd gotten started, he knew that he was in trouble. Something in me choked out the voice of reason, the last vestige of sympathy or remorse inside of me, and I leveled the blaster at Boomerang's head and fired.

I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel good, at least a little bit, when the blood splashed onto my boots.

It could've been quiet, sure. I could've gotten a fifty-foot range on him and just hit him with a poisoned pellet, and then nobody would've had to know. But he didn't kill Dad quietly. So why did he deserve something less than what he dished out?

I was slipping the blaster back into its holster on my belt when a strange sensation crept across my body. It was a tingling, like cold fingers tickling my skin with a feathery-light touch. I was used to the feeling by that point, so I wasn't surprised when Bruce emerged from the shadows on my left and said, "Disappointed doesn't _begin_ to cover what I'm feeling right now, Tim."

I swallowed hard and dared to meet his gaze. It was harsh, unforgiving, the kind of stare I'd only ever seen him give to criminals. Somehow, though, being on the receiving end of it wasn't as frightening as I'd thought it'd be. There again, the emotion seemed dulled, watered-down. I didn't have to work to keep my tone even when I replied, "I guess we both know what happens now."

Bruce nodded. "I need you to come with me."

"I don't have to."

He reached out, before I could react, and gripped the back of my neck. Through the rough Kevlar of the cowl, I felt a pinprick of pain beneath his hand and found my vision swimming within a few seconds. "Yes, you do," Bruce growled.

My last conscious thought was that I hoped he'd just take me home.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up in my own bed, in my own house. The shock of the previous night didn't register at first, not like the way I was almost instantly aware of the warmth of the sunshine on my body, and I took my sweet time becoming fully aware, sitting up and stretching and yawning…you know, the whole nine yards. It was only after I'd climbed out of bed and was sleepily tottering down to the kitchen for some breakfast that I remembered what had happened. I practically leapt across the living room and plunged my hand into the fish tank, yanking on the hidden switch only to find that it wouldn't budge. "No, no, no…" I muttered, tearing back up the stairs to my bedroom without even stopping to dry off my hand. When I reached my bedroom again, I jerked open the closet doors, shoved the clothes aside, and entered my combination on a keypad at the very back.

I was bouncing up and down on my toes as I waited for the door to slide open, and when it finally did, I was met with a horrifying sight. Bruce had apparently known a lot of what went into my hideaway, because where there was once a costume and gear, there was now a whole lot of nothing.

I closed my eyes and sagged back, sinking to the floor. "Goddamn it," I breathed.

Of course, he'd brought me back here. There was no better punishment for me than waking up to find everything I'd worked so hard to build, everything I'd made for myself, just…_gone_. I would've sulked over it a little more, but the ringing of my cell phone brought my attention back to the rest of the world. I swept it off the bedside table and put it up to my ear in a single motion. "Drake," I moaned into the mouthpiece.

"_You've let yourself become poisoned, Tim. They've corrupted you, and you didn't even fight back. It was probably only a matter of time, though. Most people don't last as long as you have."_

I couldn't take it anymore. The white-hot anger boiling inside of me bubbled up to the surface and came out in my hoarse shout. "This is the _third_ time you've called me in _six weeks_! _Who the hell are you and what do you want?_"

"_I'm surprised you can't recognize the voice of an old friend."_

That made me pause. _Old friend…_ I had to wrack my brain for an answer, search through every nook and cranny, before it finally registered. My throat seemed to be lined with cotton, and my mouth went dry in an instant. I stood up slowly, astonished. "Lonnie?"

There was a soft chuckle. _"Better late than never, I suppose."_

I, however, was in no mood for jokes. I was still reeling. "Lonnie, what in the—how did you—did Dr. Thompkins—"

"_I think I'll let your memory explain for me."_

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean?"

Suddenly, something that felt like a small, tightly-braided bundle of wires shot all the way down into my ear and kept on going deeper into my skull, making me cry out in pain. I tried to pull the phone away, but it was like pulling on a staked dog leash. _"This is going to sting," _Lonnie warned, and then my world exploded.

A burst of multicolored light filled my vision, even as a high-pitched whining blotted out all other sounds in the room. An intense throbbing sensation began behind my eyes, then spread across my temples and into the back of my head, becoming nothing short of sheer agony. I clutched at my head, dropping to my knees as images flashed through the cacophony of colors.

_I'm in Russia, surging upward on a blast of hot air provided courtesy of Red Star. I land in his ship, and my last sight is of an array of silvery missiles before the world goes dark._

_I'm in a dingy alleyway, strung up by my wrists and about to be executed by the Calculator as the Riddler watches on in something like amusement. Batman and Robin come to my rescue, but they're so different, almost…unreal._

_I'm in a car with Riddler and a three-year-old Tam Fox wearing a Batman outfit for toddlers, swerving left as Harley Quinn descends on the hood with a mallet._

_I'm watching a lanced with a blade shaped like the letter "A" protrude from the Joker's chest, and as he falls away, Anarky steps out from behind him, looking happy to see me._

_I'm catching Promise as she pitches forward, dead from bullet wounds in her back. I glance up to see Deathstroke, Cheshire, and Captain Boomerang there, the Calculator hanging in the background to egg them on._

_I've won the fight, me and my allies, and we stand victorious beneath the rubble that was once Viktor Mikalek's enormous statue. Suddenly, a shadow falls over us, and I turn to see Mikalek, looking strangely like Darkseid, jumping down on us with raised fists. Lonnie evades, but as I'm grabbing Tam to pull her with me, Mikalek's fists hit the ground and smash a hole beneath us._

_I'm falling…falling harder and faster than I've ever fallen before, and all I can see is darkness._

_I'm watching binary code stream past my eyes. The numbers move so quickly that they form a fleeting message: Red Robin must not escape._

A snap somewhere in my brain shook me out of the memory. I dropped the cell phone and fell onto all fours, panting and sweating. I could feel every muscle in my body trembling as I struggled to regain my bearings. "Holy shit," I gasped out, scrambling to pick up the phone again. "Lonnie, what the hell was that? How did you do that?"

"_There's no time to explain, Tim. All I can do is to congratulate you on waking up."_

"I don't understand; what are you _talking_ about?"

"_You saw it for yourself. Your so-called 'reality' has been nothing but a dream, a clever world created by your imagination."_

The full weight of the realization dropped onto my shoulders all at once, and even I could hear the awe in my own voice. "I never left the Unternet."

"_Exactly, and now that you know, you're in danger. Your only hope is to find Tam and wake her up, too. Only then will either of you stand a fighting chance." _


	4. Winery

Thinking about Tam and how well I knew her already, I knew I'd find her in a club, and I was right. It took a bit of searching, but I finally managed to track down her car. It was parked outside of the Winery Lights Club on 7th Street, somewhere toward the front—which was probably just to make it easier for her to find it if she came out drunk, which she would. It wasn't called "Winery Lights" for nothing.

I could feel the bass beat of the music emanating from inside rumbling in the concrete of the sidewalk under the soles of my shoes and vibrating the handle of the doorknob as I grabbed it. Opening the door, I was surprised that I wasn't blasted half across the street. The music pounded through the air, filling my ears and making them ring. The thumping percussion so overpowered the vocals and other instruments that I couldn't even tell what song it was. Not that I really cared; finding Tam was the most important thing. Of course, that was easier said than done in a club packed full of people, but I was confident I could handle it.

The conspicuous lack of bouncers meant that, fortunately, I didn't have to stop looking once I'd started. I slowly began to work around the expanse of the room, elbowing my way through the crowds of dancing patrons. Even though it wasn't real, I still felt a tiny bit uncomfortable with the sensation of hot, sweaty bodies pressing against me on all sides, forcing me to move with them, to become a part of the flow of the dance, and I didn't like it. It was like being trapped in a humid box, the moisture rubbing off on my skin and the smell, alcohol and physical exertion and cooling food, clinging to my hair. For something so false, it sure seemed lifelike. And despite the flashing, multicolored, neon lights, I could still see the faces of the people I passed, and I noticed a certain pattern repeating itself over and over again. The people all looked…I shook my head. I couldn't worry about that right then. The most important thing was to find Tam.

I found her, eventually, hanging out at the refreshment table. She was pouring herself another round of champagne and looking like she was struggling to see the glass, dribbling a little bit of the golden-orange liquid onto the table. She swayed a little on her feet, blinking rapidly as her hand strayed, drawing the bottle away from her glass yet again. I approached her cautiously, reaching out to touch her shoulder and finding that all my fingers were capable of accomplishing was a light brush of her skin. "Tam," I called over the noise.

She turned to peer at me, squinting to see me better in her drunken haze, and curled her upper lip in disgust. "I thought we made this clear, Spandex-Man," she slurred loudly. "Leave me the hell alone."

I ignored the dig and got to the point, hoping it'd distract her long enough that I could spark a memory. "I need to talk to you."

"Sorry, I'm too tipsy to listen." She raised her glass to her lips, tipped it up, and gulped down whatever champagne didn't spill onto her dress.

"Well, sorry, but I'm in too much of a rush to care." I paused. "Look, I don't really know how to say this—"

She locked cold, chocolate-brown eyes onto my face. "Then don't say anything. Now, if you don't mind, I'm really trying to enjoy this party and need to down a few more drinks so I actually _can_."

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. Unfortunately for me, the one factor in this place I could never control was Tam. Then, suddenly, it hit me, the way to catch and hold her attention. I grabbed her arm and made her face me, asking, "Have you noticed anything different about your life lately?"

Tam seemed to legitimately contemplate the question before shrugging and responding, "I guess that my ex-boyfriend is still coming after me and trying to drag me back into his crazy world after we've broken up? I need more than three rounds of this stuff to make the party semi-interesting? I don't know."

"Wait, that last bit, about the champagne, what was that?"

She shrugged again. "I need, like, a ton of it to have even a little fun. So what? Everybody gets sick of this scene every once in a while."

"Yeah, but you never used to. Think about it, Tam. Nothing really seems to matter anymore, does it? It's all flat and gray and dull. It's called emotional detachment."

"No, it's called _boredom_, Boy Genius. It happens to everyone."

"But it's happening to you because you're not really in Gotham City!"

She froze for a second, gazing at me intently. Then she burst out laughing. "Bullshit," she accused, unusually light-heartedly. "This _is_ Gotham. I'm in the Winery Something Club on…some street here. I'll give details once I'm not drunk anymore." She took another sip of champagne.

I gave another sigh. "No, Tam, it's _not_ Gotham. Don't you see? _Open your eyes and look around for a change!_" I was practically shouting at her, trying to get my point across. I pointed out a woman in the throng of revelers close by. "That blonde girl, right there, she's in five other places in this club. That tall man with the glasses dancing next to her is in seven. The DJ is actually one of ten dark-haired, dark-skinned men. There's an Asian-looking girl that's off to your right who's in fifteen other spots. It's a pattern that repeats itself: blonde, glasses, dark, Asian, blonde, glasses, dark, Asian. That wouldn't happen if you were at a _real_ club in a _real_ city in a _real_ world! _None of this exists, damn it! Just take a look around and listen to what I'm telling you!_"

Tam giggled again, slurping on her drink. "Wow, maybe you ought to have a drink or two. You're cranky tonight!"

I rolled my eyes, biting out, "Oh, to hell with this!" I reached out and grabbed her by the arm, making her start and drop her glass. It shattered on the floor, spraying chips and shards of glittering glass everywhere in a wide puddle of flavored alcohol, but I dragged Tam through the mess and ignored as best I could her protests and the way she refused to pick up her feet. I hated that I was being so rough with her, and I didn't want to have to hurt her any more than I already had, but I didn't have any choice. "We're leaving," I snapped.

"No, we're not," Tam retorted. She leaned away from me, craning her neck to peer over the heads of the people, and screeched, _"Bouncer! Bouncer, I'm being manhandled!"_

I hadn't seen the two burly, bald bears of men when I'd come in, but that was probably just because Tam hadn't wanted them around until I showed up. They shoved their way through the crowds easily, their beady-eyed stares locked right onto my face. A flash of panic rippled through my body, but then I reminded myself that this was the Unternet. The world was what we made of it down here.

My eyes flashed to the refreshment table behind us, to the open bottles of champagne sitting just within my reach. I recalled Tam's words: _"Maybe you ought to have a drink or two."_ Then, a plan started to form in my mind. Reaching over the hand still clamped on her arm, I gripped the neck of a champagne bottle in my fist. _I know I can do this, _I told myself. _I know I can beat these guys._

I waited until I could see the whites of their eyes, and then I made my move. My hand jerked up, splashing alcohol into one bouncer's face, and then I swung my arm to the right, smashing the bottle upside the other's head. When the first came at me, I brought my foot up hard and fast where it counted. An uppercut to the jaw downed him.

"C'mon, Tam, let's go," I said gruffly, pulling her along behind me. She tripped over the unconscious bouncers, lagging, but I ignored it and kept walking. She stumbled along next to me all the way outside and to my car, babbling about how I couldn't make her do anything and how I'd hear from her lawyer about it.

I sat her down on the passenger's side and went around to get in, but the second I shut my door, her hands were impacting with my chest, my shoulders, my arms, anyplace she could hit me. I avoided the slaps as best I could while I worked at trying to secure her hands in my own. "Tam," I just about shouted, flailing to capture her wrist. "Tam, get it together! I know this is crazy, I know this sounds weird, I know you're scared, but—"

"You think I'm _scared_?" she shrieked, fighting to get out of my hold. "I'm not _scared_! I'm _pissed off_ at you! It wasn't enough that you had to make my life miserable, but now you come and _ruin_ a perfectly good party just to drag me away to some other crazy scheme that's no doubt gonna get us both _killed_! Can't you just leave me _alone_?"

I held her tighter, pulling her a little closer to me. "Listen to me, Tam. Think back on when we first met. I know I put you through hell, and I wish I hadn't, but you know what? I got through every day knowing you were right there with me and that you were safe. Everything I ever did, I did to protect you. And that's what I'm doing know. I'm trying to protect you." My voice softened, grew gentler, and so did my hands around her wrists. "Please, just trust me. This is something you'll thank me for." Surprisingly, she stopped fighting and just nodded meekly. I released her and turned away to start the car. "We gotta find someplace to go, someplace safer than here."

"Whatever you say…"

The car rumbled to life, and I pulled out of the parking space slowly. We were about to head off when I heard a noise like a thunderclap and the sharp, metallic clang of a bullet bouncing off my bumper. Tam gave me a slightly fuzzy, shocked look, and I slammed the throttle into drive and stamped the pedal to the floor, roaring out of the parking lot and onto 7th Street.

"Was that a shot?" Tam asked, twisting around in her seat to look behind us at the club. "Are they shooting at us?" She started to raise her head up over the top of the seat to get a better view.

I put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down. "If we're lucky, it's just a warning shot," I replied. "Put your seatbelt on, please, and keep your head down."

She grimaced, but she did as I asked, yanking on the seatbelt to get it around her torso. I fished in my pocket and dug out my cell phone, glancing between the screen and the street as I thumbed through my caller ID to find the one number I was looking for. I put it up to my ear. "Lonnie, I got Tam," I informed him. "Now what do we do?"

"_Give her the phone. I've gotta wake her up."_

"Okay." I held it out to her. "Here, a friend of mine wants to talk to you."

She took it gingerly and pressed it against her own ear. "Hello?" She sat still for a moment before crying out and flinching. I glanced over to see her holding the phone away from her head, a braid of thick, slimy-looking black wires protruding from the screen and buried inside her ear. Her eyes bulged, her mouth dropped open, her back arched, and she made a choked noise in the back of her throat as the memories began to race through her mind. I looked away quickly, sympathizing but knowing that if I kept my eyes on her, I'd lose control.

After a few moments, it was over, and she dropped the phone. I heard it clatter onto the floor mat as I pulled up at a red light. I faced her and saw that she was gazing, wide-eyed, right into my eyes. "Dear God," she murmured, sounding shell-shocked. "I don't believe it."

"You'd better," I sighed. "It's no doubt about to get harder from here."

We drove around for another few hours, mostly in silence until Tam reached out and flipped on the radio. She sat back as some dance song started blaring through the car's speakers and gave the radio the dirtiest look I'd ever seen, shaking her head. "You know, now that I know it's not real, it feels like a funeral march. I can't explain it; it just does."

I nodded. "I know what you mean. Lonnie said, when he woke me up…he said that we're in danger now that we know. My guess is whatever did that to us will do _anything_ to keep us that way." At Tam's horrified expression, I added, "But the good news is we stand a better chance together. I mean, we're both pretty stubborn people. There's nothing we can't do in the Unternet."

"Yeah," Tam agreed, but it sounded more like she was just trying to please me and still in the midst of convincing herself to really trust me about it.

At some point near sunup, we found ourselves at the beach, sitting beside one another on the sand and watching the horizon. The sky was a beautiful array of colors, with a blue above us so dark it was almost black, fading into a purple like summery honeysuckles, and a red like fresh rose petals, and then the faintest hints of citrusy orange and golden yellow nearest the grayish water. Tam laid her head down on my shoulder and breathed deep, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. She looked a mess, her long, dark hair tangled and her sparkly lavender dress crusty with dried champagne. "I guess our whole fight was kind of stupid, wasn't it?" she said. "We got so stirred up over something that didn't even happen. And it was all just us, the whole time. We made it turn out the way it did. And then we fought over it. Like little kids."

I hugged my own knees a little closer to my chest and leaned my head onto hers. "I don't think it was stupid," I answered honestly. "I think…we just needed a little drama."

The sun peeked over the waves, spreading a yellowish glow over the beach and making the water glisten bright white. I squinted against the glare, hoping that I'd somehow get a hint or think of something if I just stared hard enough at my surroundings. It'd happened before, at the club. Couldn't it happen again?

Suddenly, I became aware that Tam had been talking to me and I'd been ignoring her. "What?" I asked.

"Do you think we'll ever get out of here?" she demanded.

I was at a loss for words, and I was reluctant to tell her that I didn't actually know. I hated to have put her through an earth-shattering revelation and all that for pretty much nothing, but if it was true? If we really were trapped in the Unternet, what else could I tell her? I dropped my eyes to the sand, searching for the right thing to say to her.

And then, suddenly, I saw it.

It was a tiny movement, nothing more than maybe the equivalent of a twitch of a hand, but I caught it. My gaze locked onto it immediately, and I stared for the longest time, watching. And then, I saw it again. It was like something was parting the mounds of sand down the center, drawing a pattern in them. My eyes followed the motion until it was right in front of us, and then I realized what it was.

Lines were being drawn in the sand, making a pathway.

"Sometimes, it's better to follow the lines in the sand than it is to cross them," I mumbled.

"What's that mean?" Tam questioned, raising her head to look at me skeptically.

I stood and brushed the sand particles off my pants, offering her my hand. "C'mon, let's go. I think we're about to find the answer to your question."


	5. Gate

**Feel free to dolly up some harsh criticism, if necessary. I need it in order to improve! Give! Give! Give!**

It was enormous, a doorway seemingly crafted of raw bronze and lined with silver. Intricate carvings of familiar figures graced the sides, women in alien headdresses wearing chainmail and brandishing shields and lances and barrel-chested men, massive in comparison, with their heads protected by rounded helms, raising clenched fists to the sky. My eyes tracked up the carvings to the top, training on a definitely recognizable being, a humanoid male in the same rounded helm and smooth armor, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. I narrowed my eyes. "Darkseid," I hissed.

It'd be an understatement to say I hated him. It wasn't enough that he'd been tormenting the heroes of Earth for years, that he'd built this place to degrade humanity even further. He had to control everyone, manipulate them…myself included. The Anti-Life Equation had been an interesting ride, but the Unternet? That was almost addictive. Corruption that could creep in without you even realizing it, and how many people would dive into a no-consequences world without considering that?

I found my gaze focusing itself on the word engraved into the doorway just beneath Darkseid's likeness, an all-capitalized print stating: **"FOUNDATION"**. My hand came up to touch a symbol on the doors, a flourished Greek letter I knew all too well. "Omega," I murmured. Then I looked at Tam. "I think this is a gate."

She was silent for a minute. "Like…a doorway kind of gate, like, out of here?" she asked.

"Or to other levels, perhaps, but essentially, yes." I bent down a little more to examine the omega, running my fingers over it repeatedly. It was a groove dug into the door, an impression of sorts. "Good news: this might take us closer to getting out of the Unternet. Bad news: we need a key."

Tam threw her hands up into the air. "Which is pretty much _impossible_ with a city the size of Gotham down here, but, hey, what the hell?"

I nodded in agreement, straightening. "Well…we need to try and figure out possible locations of a key." I sat back down on the sand, rubbing at my lips as I contemplated. Tam sat in front of me slowly, watching me. "Okay, so, Darkseid had the Omega Sanction, but that's more of a destructive force, right? It sent Batman back in time, is rumored to be able to disintegrate matter, so there's no way it'd be the power source of a place like the Unternet. But Darkseid was also a user of the Anti-Life Equation, his method of mind-control in the last Crisis, which could be keeping this place in existence. After all, it was never destroyed."

"Hence the omega-shaped key and the 'Anti-Life Lives' banners we saw when we first got here," Tam added, somewhat uncertainly.

"Exactly; now, the Unternet we knew was influenced heavily by thought and desire, right? And that presumably runs through all ends of it. So, in theory, we've been influencing this entire world. It's quite possible that we could be the only ones inhabiting this level, so—"

"_We_ created this entire world."

"Yeah, see, you're getting it."

"So, we hid the key."

I bit my lip. "That's where it gets tricky. I think, if we knew the location of the key to get out of the Foundation, we'd probably already have it and be out of here. There must be some kind of way to lord over the programming here, to take control of small aspects of each level, if there are more than two, which there probably are. In which case, Mikalek was most likely the one that hid the key."

Tam sighed. "Shit."

"_But_ he's also at the mercy of our world. This was built on our minds; we have a say in what goes on here, apparently. Working off our own experiences, it's probably impossible to come down to the Foundation without losing at least a fraction of your memory, because it seems to be the most like reality; otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten lost in this place for however long it's been. Mikalek wouldn't take a risk like that, so he wouldn't have come here to create another part of the world to place the key's location in. He would've had no choice but to leave it someplace we'd come up with."

Tam blinked. "So, basically, what you're saying is that we know where the key is, but we don't know where the key is, and now all we have to do to escape is find it. That makes sense."

I spread my hands in a calming gesture. "All we really have to do is think of someplace it'd be easy to hide an omega symbol in."

"Sure, sounds _real_ easy," Tam drawled.

"I thought it was my job to be negative."

She shook her head in that way that said she was frustrated with me, that she was exasperated, but that she still trusted me for some strange reason unknown to man. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to drag you down. It's just…this place is supposed to be huge, right? If it's built off our minds, our memories…you've been all over the world, I've been all over most of it. How do we know this key we're looking for is in Gotham?"

I shrugged. "I don't. But we've gotta have someplace to start, right? Besides, it's not like it's impossible to find. Lonnie told me that we're both in danger now that we know the truth. It's safest to assume that Mikalek's security will be heaviest the closer we get to the key."

Tam stared at me for a moment. "Somehow, chugging around the world until we find a ton of people that want to kill us doesn't seem like a very good idea."

"Okay, okay, it was just a thought. What do you propose?"

She thought about it. "I guess…" She trailed off. "I don't know."

There was silence except for the crashing of the waves on the shore for the longest time. I glanced up to see Tam staring off at the city skyline. "It's so much like home," she murmured, lost in thought. "It looks so real, so big." Then she snapped her eyes back to mine. "We're really gonna search every bit of it, aren't we?"

I gave her a little half-smile. "Unless Lonnie hits us with another brilliant revelation, yeah, we will."

And you have no idea how much I hoped Lonnie would send another message. I never realized how long it took to traverse all of Gotham City until I was stuck doing it digitally for what felt like it must've been hours. Both of us were scanning out the windows, looking for anything even vaguely omega-shaped. It was only the seventh time we were diverted around the Marx Bridge downtown that I realized it.

The thought hit me so suddenly that I slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road. "Marx Bridge isn't under construction," I said, more to the general atmosphere than to Tam in particular. "It hasn't been for twenty years."

"Go back, go back!" Tam squealed.

I stamped on the gas pedal and jerked the wheel hard, cutting a tight U-turn into the opposite lane and speeding back toward the bridge. We pulled up alongside the roadblocks, and I practically shoved my head out the window to gaze up at the statues adorning the bridge. And there, in the cupped hands of one of the women in the flowing dresses, I could see the slightest green gleam showing through to the other side, a shimmer shaped like an omega symbol.

"I think I found it," I told Tam, ducking my head back into the car. "It's up in the hands of the statue."

She opened her mouth to say something, but I didn't make it out. Mainly, it was because there were two strong, meaty hands balled up in my shirt, pulling me out onto the street through the window of the car.

Yeah. We'd definitely found the key.

**Sorry for the short chapter. Writer's block got hellish there for a while. Anyway, pretty please read and review! Tips are much appreciated!**


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